Ga. Power gets green light at Vogtle, after leaving airport in the dark

From The AJC: “Georgia’s Public Service Commission has voted unanimously to allow continued construction of two nuclear reactors at Georgia Power’s embattled Plant Vogtle, which is billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.”

The PSC has once again shown voters that they will always side with corporate greed over working Georgians. Fortunately, two commissioners are up for re-election in 2018.

On a related note, The Atlanta Hartsfield Airport power outage hit about 1 p.m. Sunday, grounding nearly 1,000 flights and leaving 30,000 people stranded, in darkness. Planes sat on the tarmac for more than six hours and international flights had to be sent to other airports.

Although Georgia Power has not explicitly accepted blame for the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport power outage, they told CNNMoney, in response to Delta CEO’s request for reimbursement, that “we cannot and do not guarantee uninterrupted electric power service.” A response that carries an air of guilt but in a way that avoids accountability in a typical, Georgia Power way.

Georgia Power spokesperson Holly Crawford said the utility apologizes for the inconvenience to travelers and “our main focus is to ensure this never happens again.”

As of earlier this week, Georgia Power officials are continuing to investigate into the cause of the fire that created the power outage. It appears that a piece of the utility’s switchgear, which helps manage the flow of power, may have failed and started the blaze.

Another Georgia Power spokesperson said fires “almost never happen in one of our underground facilities.” He added “mechanical breakdowns can happen and the system continues to switch until it finds a source, but when you add fire — that was the wild card.”